In the search field type “Christianity is” and you will see recommendations of “bullsh*t, not a religion, a lie, false, a cult, wrong, fake, dying, Jewish, and not a religion t-shirt.”

In the search field type “Hinduism is” and you will see recommendations of “monotheistic, false, polytheistic, the majority religion of, the oldest religion, not a religion, fake, most commonly found, characterized by, and wrong.”

In the search field type “Buddhism is” and you will see recommendations of “not a religion, wrong, not what you think, bullsh*t, polytheistic, a religion, false, based on what concepts, the best religion, and atheism.”

In the search field type “Judaism is” and you will see recommendations of “false, not a race, not a religion, a race, a religion of the book, not Jewish, a gutter religion, monotheistic, a cult, and a religion.”

Try typing “Atheism is” and you will see recommendations of “a religion, dead, not a religion, wrong, the new fundamentalism, growing, a non-prophet organization, so senseless, illogical, a religion supreme court.” Clearly they are not holding back on the Atheists.

tsg – There was a little a little fiasco a while back where a talking baby doll and a Nintendo DS game were supposedly saying ‘Islam is the light’ when they were supposed to be just doing baby speak. Rather amusing, a bunch of Christians got all furious about it.

Both were made by Japan so I doubt there was actual intent there; Japan isn’t too Islamic last I heard, at the very least not Nintendo.

There appears to be several misunderstandings here. First, following the procedure referred to by PZ, Google apparently does not spare themselves, too. A search for ‘Google is’ brings up ‘the devil’, ‘watching us’, ‘making us stupid’ and so forth.

Secondly, when you type ‘Christianity is’ (without a space after ‘is’), one of the options that come up is ‘Christianity Islam Judaism’. I think that is the issue. The search algorithm probably conflates the beginning ‘Is’ of Islam with the verb ‘is’. And therefore, ‘Islam is’ doesn’t bring up anything.

Comstock at #4.

Same deal with Spanish. “Islam es” gets you nothing.

That is because you are presumably using an English language Google site. If you go to the Spanish Google site ‘Google.es’ and try ‘Islam es’, an option comes up with more than 200000 hits, ‘islam es lo mismo que musulman’ (= “Islam is the same as Muslim”, whatever that means).

OR, there is indeed a conspiracy at work here – to suppress anti-Islamic voice of any kind.

I wonder if the problem has more to do with the search term used? I just entered “Muslim is” and got “wrong”, “bullshit”, “a race”, and “a cult”.

I’m surprised that similar results don’t come up for “Islam is”, but I think it’s at least possible that the word “Muslim” is used more in negative English-language statements about Islam (and whatever I think about the truth of religion in general, I do think all of the statements I quoted are intended to be negative).

Secondly, when you type ‘Christianity is’ (without a space after ‘is’), one of the options that come up is ‘Christianity Islam Judaism’. I think that is the issue. The search algorithm probably conflates the beginning ‘Is’ of Islam with the verb ‘is’. And therefore, ‘Islam is’ doesn’t bring up anything.

Falsification: in that case ‘Islam in’ should likewise not bring up any suggestions, but it does.
–Barbarian

Disappointing, but at the end of thee day it is Google’s site, they can do what they want.
However, I would take it as an indication that Google doesn’t believe that it can explain big words such as ‘statistical’ and ‘algorithm’ to the sort of idiots who would take Google suggestions as an affront to their religion

I’ve tried this in German, and I do indeed get the same conspicuous result. I tried several variations with other verbs and other religions, and it’s always the same outcome:
Google suggests only neutral or positive phrases for “Islam …” and all sorts for any other religion or non-religion. Putting a space after “is” makes no difference.

There is definitely some self-censorship going on.
I understand this. Google is not a news outlet, and they could be shut down by entire muslim nations if they offend the religion of “peace through conformity”.

In French, if you type “Islam est” (Islam is), the only suggestion is “islam est une secte” (Islam is a sect). But if you add the definite article in front of it, you get “dangerous”, “religion for Blacks”, “the true religion”, […] “the religion of science”…

We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum.

I think tariqata @#28 is on the right track. If I understand correctly, the search suggestions are based on what other people type search for. Likely people are using some other term when they’re looking for confirmation of a bias. Suggestions for “Islam” and “Islam ” appear to be about seeking information.

Secondly, when you type ‘Christianity is’ (without a space after ‘is’), one of the options that come up is ‘Christianity Islam Judaism’. I think that is the issue. The search algorithm probably conflates the beginning ‘Is’ of Islam with the verb ‘is’. And therefore, ‘Islam is’ doesn’t bring up anything.

Falsification: in that case ‘Islam in’ should likewise not bring up any suggestions, but it does.

I tried Christianity Ch…, and got results, I tried Judaism ju, and got results, so it’s not repetition of the initial letters. I also tried muslims are, and got no suggestions, but the same was true when I tried christians are, or jews are.

I recently called a family member on his new google phone number. I didn’t get through, but left a voice message. He received an email of my transcribed voice message processed by voice recognition. This is what’s next: automatically listening to all google phone messages and possibly conversations, detecting commercially relevant key words, and targeting ads at you based on these key words.

As you type, Google Suggest communicates with Google and comes back with the suggestions we show. If you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, suggestions are drawn from searches you’ve done, searches done by users all over the world, sites in our search index, and ads in our advertising network. If you’re not signed in to your Google Account, no history-based suggestions are displayed. Data you send to Google is protected by Google’s privacy policy.

William @51: I stand corrected. But it is intriguing. What could possibly trigger this weird behaviour?

joeyess @#59: As others before me have pointed out, the question is not if Google is showing search results with the term “Islam is”. (Google is.) The question is why there are no automatic suggestions – before you submit the query – if the search term is “Islam is”.

Perhaps it depends on which localization of Google is being used as well. In Japanese, “Islam” turns up “customs”, “banking”, “pork”, “women”, “diet”, “Christmas”, “alcohol”, “names” (also in Japanese).

I came up with “Octopus is a fish.” Which means nothing, but maybe something. “Pharyngula is” pulls no suggestions either. “PZ Myers is” pulls nothing. “Muslim is” pulls up some stuff.
Really, though, why don’t we focus more on why Atheism is a religion? We should really start a weekly meeting to address this. Probably meet sometime everybody can get together. Since we’re atheists I’m thinking Sunday morning, we’re all free and television sucks at that time. We should have a master of ceremonies to help guide the discussion or just address concerns among us and tell us the right path to…huh?

Count me in as somebody who immediately set out testing the barriers to get islam related prompts….and had no problems. “Muslim is” dumps out a list of prompts, as other folks have noted. “Islam” by itself has a list.

It’s possible that “Islam is” triggers some kind of code issue because the word “is” is common and looks like you could accidentally be repeating the word “Islam” or that it would be redundant. (The word “is” being contained in “Islam.”) That’s about the only thing I can think of. (I put a space after typing “Christianity christ” and lo, all the search results disappeared.)

Typing that stuff into the search field of my IE8, all without a space at the end, produces the following:

christianity is:
christianity islam

hinduism is:no results

buddhism is:
buddhism israel

judaism is:no results

atheism is:
atheism is a lie
atheism is the new fundamentalism

islam is:no results

allah is:
[10 results, all in German (“great” and “great and mighty” are the first two) except for the 6th, which is in Turkish]

google is:
[10 results, all in German except for the 3rd, which is “google is your friend”, and the 4th, which isn’t language-specific (“google israel”). The first is “google ist dein freund”. The last is “google ist böse” ( = is evil). The 2nd and the 8th declare Google a miscarriage, the 5th has “my friend” instead of “your”, the 6th declares Google “stupid” and the 7th “gay”. No Skynet among them, alas.]

islam was:
[6 results, all in German, the 2nd and the last to do with washing.]

re tsg @95:Actually, based on other attempts noted above, it just seems to be a peculiarity in the algorithm.

I don’t mean to be argumentative, but I don’t really see how the previous experiments disprove my assertion. Which example specifically do you mean?

The fact that some of the more obscure “ is” turn up no suggestions might just mean no one has ever entered such a search term before. Google does not “make up” suggestions, but merely lists the most common of previous search phrases. I find it very hard to believe that no one has ever searched for “Islam is evil” (for example) or some of the other phrases that come up for the other religions in the original posting.

So it seems Google prefers actions over meek religulous qualifications. Did not one of the Christian far-out harpies publicly call to arms against Islam and recommended that the US Army invade all those countries whose citizen adhere to Mohammed instead of baby jebus, to devoutly pave the way for Gawd the Lawd?

There’s a lesson here for Christians. If they want their idiotic death cult to be respected, they are going to have to start flying airplanes into buildings and they need to be cutting people’s heads off.

I also agree that it seems unlikely that no one has ever searched for something along the lines of “Islam is evil” – but I also think it equally unlikely that if Google is filtering its suggestion algorithm to avoid giving offense to Muslims, it wouldn’t apply the same filter to the word “Muslim”, or to searches such as “Islam has”.

This why I think that this is a specific and deliberate filter. They are not trying to figure out what are positive or negative search phrases, they are just imposing a blanket filter on “Islam is”. Possibly because they are afraid it will not be understood to be a list of common searches but the actual opinion of Google about the nature of Islam.

Come on, guys! One cannot build a whole theory based on a single data point! Ignoring counter-evidence such as “allah is” or “muslim are”.

I think that’s just a glitch. Probably a PC in a data center has died while processing the “I” wordlist of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce process for search suggestions index. It’ll fix itself in a month or two.

I don’t mean to be argumentative, but I don’t really see how the previous experiments disprove my assertion. Which example specifically do you mean?

“discordianism is” & “unitarianism is”, for example.

The fact that some of the more obscure ” is” turn up no suggestions might just mean no one has ever entered such a search term before. Google does not “make up” suggestions, but merely lists the most common of previous search phrases. I find it very hard to believe that no one has ever searched for “Islam is evil” (for example) or some of the other phrases that come up for the other religions in the original posting.

Google is notoriously secretive about their algorithms which makes it difficult to speculate on what triggers a suggestion. It need not be that no one has ever searched for it. As others have pointed out, “Muslim is”, “Allah is”, etc. all return suggestions, so we can believe that they are deliberately doing it, but poorly, or that something rather more mundane is going on. The simpler explanation seems to be the latter.

I think that’s just a glitch. Probably a PC in a data center has died while processing the “I” wordlist of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce process for search suggestions index. It’ll fix itself in a month or two.

Talk about building a theory on a single data point! What about the pricipal of parsimony? Just how likely is it that a “glitch” will only fail on “Islam is” and not the many other “I* is” or “* is” search terms. The simplest answer is that “Islam is” is specifically blocked.

is a non-compromising mono-culture…
Islam is and has always been political…..
Islam is the dominant religion of the third world……
Islam is a dangerous religion…..

and on and on.

What am I missing? Google seems to have a plethora of definitions.

There is a site called “Islam is” that is temporarily down, but there were many links to be found.

I didn’t find that Google was blocking anything.

I think you hit the jackpot.
I think that’s the answer right there where I put it in boldface.

Imagine if someone put up a hate site filled with offensive material, and because they thought of it as “my own personal black hole of opinion”, they gave it the domain name “black-hole.com”. Now, if Google tries to stop making suggestions for that one site, the algorithm might also have the side effect of stopping suggestions for searches on the astronomy term “black hole”.

That might be happeneing here. To stop themselves from suggesting the one single “islam-is” site, they accidentally also ended up stopping all suggestions that start with “islam is”.

I can’t check if this is true or not, since the islam-is site is now down and the cache doesn’t have a copy of it. I have no idea what the content of it was, so I can’t test this hpyothesis. But it seems like a possibility that should be eliminated before jumping to conclusions.

SteveM – not only is it not unreasonable, but the reference pages indicate that it should also return your OWN searches. I am kind of leaning toward the possibility of StevenMading (weird….) is thinking. I can’t see this being a specific rejection algorithm based on the “Islam is” text alone.

But some of the responses to various searches are really lighting up my evening.

SteveM – not only is it not unreasonable, but the reference pages indicate that it should also return your OWN searches. I am kind of leaning toward the possibility of StevenMading (weird….) is thinking. I can’t see this being a specific rejection algorithm based on the “Islam is” text alone.

No, the fact that it is also blocking my previous searches such as, “Islam is evil” and “Islam is peace”, etc., is exactly what makes me think it is based on “Islam is” alone. It is the simplest explanation.

As for “episcopalianism” and “methodism”, etc, no, it is not based on anything other than my own opinion, but really, how often do you see those words in the news as compared to “Islam”?

No, the fact that it is also blocking my previous searches such as, “Islam is evil” and “Islam is peace”, etc., is exactly what makes me think it is based on “Islam is” alone. It is the simplest explanation.

It also fails to return my searches for “christianity is purple” and “hemmingway is mandarin”, so apparently not.

As for “episcopalianism” and “methodism”, etc, no, it is not based on anything other than my own opinion, but really, how often do you see those words in the news as compared to “Islam”?

You do not know what the algorithm is, so you can’t make judgements about what should or should not be there and why it isn’t, especially when it is only backed up by your opinion. You don’t know.

Also, notice that “Islam i” produces a suggestion list that is only “Islam in …”, whereas the other religions give a pretty even mix of “in” and “is” in the list. “Islam is” is clearly being specifically blocked.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, what if Google is just a front company for a bunch of evangelical Christians? They programmed Google’s search algorithms intentionally so this would happen in order to divert all the atheists on a wild goose chase typing nonsense into a text field. While all the atheists are trying to uncover Google’s deception they’re putting their plan for world domination into action.

Also, notice that “Islam i” produces a suggestion list that is only “Islam in …”, whereas the other religions give a pretty even mix of “in” and “is” in the list. “Islam is” is clearly being specifically blocked.

It never ceases to amuse me how many people would rather go to great lengths to maintain their offense than be relieved there really wasn’t anything to be offended by. You need there to be something nefarious to be mad at.

It never ceases to amuse me how many people would rather go to great lengths to maintain their offense than be relieved there really wasn’t anything to be offended by. You need there to be something nefarious to be mad at.

I am not offended and I don’t see how I am going to great lengths to maintain being offended. To me it is simply an intersting little puzzle; what could be causing this result? It just seems to me the simplest explanation for this behavior is a single line of code that blocks “Islam is” suggestions.

If anything I am accusing Google of being simplistic, not nefarious. The fact that other “offensive” phrases are not blocked is what makes me say it is only blocking “Islam is”, they are not analyzing phrases for offense but simply blocking the one that is most likely to cause offense.

Saying that it is “just a bug” is not an explanation. What is the nature of a bug that would produce this kind of result? I can’t think of one that wouldn’t hose up alot of other suggestion results. I realize my failure of imagination is not a proof, so yes, I agree I could be wrong about the simplistic cause, but until Google explains what is going wrong, I’ll stick with my hypothesis as the simplist solution.

SteveM – yeah – I know – I was agreeing with you, but in light of what negentropyeater found, a bug looks more probable. And the probability of a bug hitting “Islam is” alone (well, maybe not so alone?) is …. exactly one, cause it has. Assuming of course that it IS a bug and all..

When you said “it does not seem unreasonable that those terms have not been searched for before.” I was pointing out that – at the very least, you (and me and seemingly thousands if not hundreds of thousands of others) HAVE searched that phrase – and yet the engine does not return the suggestion.

But … wait – “penis” returns… damn. Zifnab is right! Islam = penis! It is all so clear now.

No, the fact that it is also blocking my previous searches such as, “Islam is evil” and “Islam is peace”, etc., is exactly what makes me think it is based on “Islam is” alone. It is the simplest explanation.

I don’t understand how you think that rules out my proffered alternate explanation that they might be actually trying to just ban suggestions about a single website that happens to be named “islam-is.com” (There was such a site. It’s been taken down), and the fact that this has the side effect of cutting off all other “islam is” suggestions is an unintended consequence of that. The behavior you describe is exactly the behavior I’d expect if that was going on.

but on the way to finding that out, you discover that “pope” generates three suggestions about the Popeyes fried-chicken chain and one about the sailor man before anything to do with any of the guys in the magic chair.

What I find fascinating is how so many of us immediately started generating hypotheses about this phenomenon, and then go and test these hypotheses, and then report our results on this thread. (And test other people’s hypotheses as they are reported)

It’s almost like an analogy of the scientific method.

Except we seem to be missing the proper scientific instrument (which I suppose might be some means of accessing Google’s source code) to effectively distinguish the competing theories from one another. I suppose as analogy it would be like germ theory before the microscope, or astronomy before the telescope?

Also interesting is that only a few commenters suggested anything like asking Google what is going on (which would kind of be like praying to the creator for guidance?)

It also reminds me of the old adage:

One should not suspect malignity if simple incompetence will do.

To which I can add that one likewise need not postulate incompetence when simple serendipity will do.

the “Islam is” bug is another good sign Google needs to share more on how Google suggest works.

This was particularly well put :

OK, I?m sure that?s not going to please any cynics out there. But I still don?t believe Google is deliberately removing that term from Google Suggest. Having covered Google since the company literally began, all I can offer you is the real explanation that I personally believe goes something like this:

We?re kind of flaky about things at Google. We have these algorithms that you?d think should operate consistently, but they?re not perfect. So why?s that term coming and going? We don?t really know. We?d drill down into it, but we?re kind of busy building cool things with Lego. Plus, we don?t really think it?s that big of a deal. Only crazy people would think we?re really trying to manipulate people in this way, right?

That?s a typical Google failure. No, it?s not just crazy people. It?s people who have a general mistrust of any big organization. And when you?re dealing with a story where there?s evidence of a concerted effort to suppress information, yeah, some people are going to get paranoid about how the biggest information dissemenator on the planet ? Google ? is acting in relation to that. So put away the Lego and spend some time ensuring that Google Suggest isn?t operating as if you simply throw dice each morning to decide what it will say.

I am not offended and I don’t see how I am going to great lengths to maintain being offended. To me it is simply an intersting little puzzle; what could be causing this result?

Given the amount of information we have, just about anything.

It just seems to me the simplest explanation for this behavior is a single line of code that blocks “Islam is” suggestions.

Only if you dismiss with a wave of the hand, based on nothing but your opinion, the other examples that also exhibit the exact same behavior.

If anything I am accusing Google of being simplistic, not nefarious. The fact that other “offensive” phrases are not blocked is what makes me say it is only blocking “Islam is”, they are not analyzing phrases for offense but simply blocking the one that is most likely to cause offense.

This is based on nothing but your opinion as well, I take it.

Saying that it is “just a bug” is not an explanation.

Not when you so obviously want it to be something else.

What is the nature of a bug that would produce this kind of result? I can’t think of one

Your inability to think of one doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

that wouldn’t hose up alot of other suggestion results.

You’ve been given several that you’ve dismissed out of hand.

I realize my failure of imagination is not a proof, so yes, I agree I could be wrong about the simplistic cause, but until Google explains what is going wrong, I’ll stick with my hypothesis as the simplist solution.

That much is obvious, despite the complete lack of evidence and the fact that other, simpler solutions have been proffered.

I don’t understand how you think that rules out my proffered alternate explanation that they might be actually trying to just ban suggestions about a single website that happens to be named “islam-is.com” (There was such a site. It’s been taken down), and the fact that this has the side effect of cutting off all other “islam is” suggestions is an unintended consequence of that. The behavior you describe is exactly the behavior I’d expect if that was going on.

Okay, I don’t think I was ruling out your explanation. What you quoted from me is part of why I think the blocking is based solely on the phrase “Islam is”; yours is a good hypothesis for their motivation for blocking that phrase. I’m just saying that the simplest way to achieve that result is to just block “Islam is” suggestions.

Guys, I noted above that there are several other search phrases that also yield no suggestions. This isn’t unique to the phrase Islam is. It also affects several phrases such as “chinese are”, americans are… It’s a bug–no rhyme or reason to it.

I am strongly leaning in favor of the explanation offered by Steven Mading in post 124. I just tried out typing “stormfront” (the name of a major white-supremacist forum, which is the first hit for that term). It stopped suggesting after “stormfr” (even though Stormfront is also the name of a movie studio, a string quartet, and, of course, the concept in meteorology). So it would appear that it is Google censorship, but as performed by some sort of presumed-hate-site-focused algorithm.

correction; the “movie studio” I mentioned is actually a video-game company whose games are often based on movies. It is currently out of business. So, yeah, the first page for “stormfront” is largely dominated by pages relating to the hate site. Whatever.

Huh. I tried every language I know, and can confirm the results for Japanese (lots of stuff); for Chinese, the list is small (????paganism, heresy???????who founded it?), but telling, I think. Considering how censor-happy they are there, and the recent strife between the Han and the Muslim Uyghurs, it seems odd that there are just two entries, one negative, one neutral.

I have to call bullshit. Can’t replicate any of your suggestions. Not Christianity is, not Judaism is, not atheism is. nope.

The only one which worked for me with a freshly installed Firefox with no history was

“Christianity was”

which gave me the suggestion

“Christianity waswas”

Sorry, P.Z., I just don’t think you’re right. You’re letting your history corrupt your data to bash a religion that Americans are currently pretending is inherently violent and threatening, and that’s been singled out by racists like Hitchens and Harris because God is a realtor, and by Xians because remote bombing of millions of people is not violence or threatening.

I just tried “stormfr” again, this time using firefox (IE previously); again I got the vile site as the only suggestion and not an empty list. Also tried it signed out of my gmail account and got the same result. I cannot explain why we get different results, I have never searched for “stormfr” before today.

re negentropyeater:

I mispoke, I meant “happy” as “satisfied”. That is, if tsg is satisfied with the explanation “it is just a bug” with no further elaboration, then it is fine with me (that he is satisfied, not that it is fine such a bug exists).

@171: I’ve been wondering if there’s some regional variation? It’s the only explanation I can come up with (though my results, using google.ca, seem to otherwise be about the same as what everyone else reports).

Or maybe, and I will admit that I have not read all of these, the Muslim profit Muhammad is the one true profit and the I Am God (consequently also the god of the Jews and the Christians) is the one true god. Seems odd he (assuming male here) would allow the other sibling faiths to take such an unfair beating.

For those who want to play with several country versions at the same time, this Google Spreadsheet lets you enter the first characters of a Google search in the first cell and it shows the top suggestions in those countries and languages you define.

(answer Yes, make a copy, you need to be logged in to open the spreadsheet)

“Falsification: in that case ‘Islam in’ should likewise not bring up any suggestions, but it does.
–Barbarian”

Actually, no. @kausik.datt is most likely correct. Try another word with “Is” as the first two letters. For instance, “Isabella is” vs. “Bella is”. I tried this with several words starting with “Is” followed by “is” and found similar results each time.

I have much fun with this thread. Lots of nice suggestions, much LOLzzz.

What scares me though (apart from the apparent bug in google, always thought the thing got too big, tried using bing, but daughter keeps putting the start page back to google) is the number of people that are willing to see evil in this. I’ve seen that on some other (conspiracytype) sites, but i wasn’t expecting it here.

As i said have tried some of these myself and others than islam also gave no suggestion.
Like Buddhism is, satanism is, etc. both in dutch and english. I DO NOT believe that anybody is protecting both buddhism, satanism and islam. (an Xtian conspiracy theorist would believe that it’s evidence for the antichrist being google ðŸ˜‰

I looked but I didn’t see any response by PZ to the information developed in this thread. Lots of smart people commenting. I’m with Moogie @181 – sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, ya know? Sometimes PZ has his Offensive sensor tweaked a bit too high.

Okay, as to the idiocy about Hitchens being some kind of racist….He has championed the right of Palestinians not to be kicked out of Gaza by settlers, defended Rashid Khalidi when McCain-Palin attacked him, and constantly champions India and Indian causes. Even his support for the Iraq war, which I disagreed with, was based largely on a dislike of how Hussein acted towards his own people. Hitchens and Harris are more concerned about Islam than other religions because it’s more dangerous right now, which anyone not drowning in PC dogma is going to have to admit sooner or later. People who imply that it means Harris and Hitchens are racist, with no further evidence, are just being willfully ignorant.

Negen @199:
My point is that it appears that Google does not appear to be ‘blocking’ anything intentionally with respect to Islam. I’m not an IT expert, but as plien@195 points out there does not seem to any attempt to ‘block’, but rather an unexpected event caused by the code. PZ used the term ‘why…block’ which seems like a conclusion that Google has made a decision.

well it does appear as if Google Suggest is “blocking” search recommendations for “Islam is”.
It so happens that said “blockage” is not intentional, but the result of a software bug (see my comment #129).

It’s clear from the title of this post and the “Good question.” comment that PZ is not part of the ‘it’s just a bug’ crowd. He is clearly suggesting that Google is proactively blocking (Blocking, not “blocking”) ‘Islam is…’ suggestions.

Maybe PZ was sharing a bottle of scotch with Hitchens when he wrote this post.

As someone else pointed out, if Google was treating Islam with kid gloves they’d be striking the Danish Mohammed cartoons from their searches.

Seriously, folks, negentropyeater is more than likely right. It’s a bug, nothing more nothing less. Quite frankly, I think some people’s hatred/aversion/disgust with religion is clouding their critical thinking skills.

You know what, this whole story is bullshit. PZ is wrong. It’s not a “good question”. It’s a bug that cropped up and Blair Scott at atheists.org and Alex Wilhelm at The Next Page wants there to be a conspiracy involving a major religion.

Seriously, so what if “Islam is” doesn’t auto-generate suggestions like other religions? Is it really that important? You have to be a fucking moron to be incapable of finding Islam-offensive material on Google.

Of all the things that religion fucks up on a regular basis and some atheists are focusing on this? Pathetic.

What I like about this particular thread is that when faced with a conspiracy theory, the Pharyngula community’s response was to posit hypotheses about it and make attempts to test them (to the limited extent that it is possible from the position of a user with only black-box access to the software). The response was not to automatically take it on faith.

I offered my own hypothesis above, and I don’t know if it’s right. Others have offered other hypotheses, and posted the evidence that makes them think theirs is right. The important point is that we are all in agreement that interpreting the evidence is the right way to argue it, regardless of what we’d like to be true or not.

Some might call this the scientific method, but I just consider it basic honesty. It’s really sad that it’s not a more common approach taken in such arguments.

And, no, I don’t think Google, with as much pull as they have, should be biased. But seriously, Google admitted it was a mistake. They’re working to fix this. Shit happens.

Should Google be more open about how they function? Probably. This whole post, however, was quite frankly pointless. Google fucked up and it involved religion, so people are concern trolling that Google is kid gloving Islam.

No : it was one amongst empty number of blogs that discussed about this. Google got wind. Google reacted and are fixing their bug (which most probably doesn’t affect only “Islam is” but many other strings of words we don’t know about).

Assuming the post got Google to fix the bug, then something indeed was accomplished. However, there was a stink of “Google is afraid of Islam” associated with some of the commentaries (starting with the initial story at atheists.org) that irritated me.

The problem is, what does this story have to do with Pharyngula? It’s a completely reaching topic that serves a better purpose as filling empty space than doing anything else. Is this a personal blog where whatever floats his fancy ends up or is this a blog on Science Blogs where topics pertaining to science are posted? Oh but what about computer science? Well does PZ know anything about computer science? Can he tell us anything about the search algorithms that are being used by Google? He quoted another post and left us with “good question”.

It is an interesting question if you’re interested in how a search engine works but there is no conspiracy and there is certainly no religious angle to it.

But I do agree with Steven Mading because despite the topic being breached and some people agreeing that a conspiracy is afoot there were still plenty of people who suspended judgment in order to test the hypothesis and there were those who challenged the default assumption in order to balance things out. So at least this thread served as an illustration of what critical thinking can achieve.

None have bad connotations so far except ‘hinduism the (destroyer)’ and the is expanded to theism or atheism at times
‘theism the’ has zero suggestions, so it may be a bug in the suggestion code that could be brought to Google’s attention.

I am perfectly aware of where I am. I haven’t just started reading Pharyngula. Unfortunately the random biological ejaculations overwhelm posts about evolution and other topics in biology.

That being said, if Science Blogs doesn’t mind it I am not really in any position to say what PZ should and should not be posting, I just very much prefer hearing about biology because I think PZ explains it very well. I especially liked what he posted about exaptation in the development of the nervous system a month back.

‘theism the’ has zero suggestions, so it may be a bug in the suggestion code that could be brought to Google’s attention.

What kind of bug? “Theatre the” produces many suggestions (including “theatre theatre”, so not adverse to repetative search phrases)

Google says they have a filter on the suggestion function, what is so inconceivable that “Islam is” is in the filter? In my opinion, the only “bug” is in how the phrase got into the filter to begin with.

Seems the problem wasn’t so big after all (I haven’t read the whole thread, shit there’s alot of it!).
But I’m thinking that maybe they should “protect” islam a bit!? Just think about all those poor schmucks driving around, doing the Google Streetview drivebys…

Seed has been working on fixing this problem since it was first reported. We have contracted the makers of Movable Type, and what was estimated to be a quick fix has, unfortunately, not been. They do think they’ve identified all the separate errors that are occurring, and are working at targeting them one by one. You should be experiencing fewer problems commenting now, and – fingers crossed – soon should have none at all.

Islam-is.com is a site that is owned by Pete Seda (from the whois database for internet domains) a.k.a Pirouz Sedaghaty, a person of Iranian origin, who co-founded a branch of the defunct Islamic charity, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, in Ashland, OR. Seda and the Charity have been investigated for funneling funds to Chechen terrorists and tax fraud. Seda has been a fugitive (allegedly in Dubai) until 2007, when he returned to U.S. to stand trial (most recent page on the case that I could find here). Whatever it was, Islam-is.com, could not have been a hate-Islam site.

If the search phrase is terminated with “Islam is” the top result is Islam-is site. Not so, if the search phrase is terminated ends with “good”, “evil”, whatever. Looks like Google wants us to go to this defunct site, no?

My primary point was that if islam-is was blocked from suggestion, then there could be a bug that also then cuts off all suggestions that begin with “islam is”. My supposition that islam-is might be blocked for being an anti-islam site is secondary to my point. This guess was based on not being able to see the site anymore. If it was blocked for any other reason my point about how blocking suggestions for one site would then block other suggestions for other sites starting with the same initial terms would still stand. If it was blocked for the opposite reason – for being a site funnelling funds to Islamic terrorist groups – that really doesn’t detract from my point.

My primary point was that people are incorrect in claiming Google’s motives for blocking all suggestions for “islam is” was based on fear of all such responses that might be negative, when there’s a much simpler, better explanation dangling right in front of us – that being that once one single site is blocked from suggestion, as islam-is is, that would mean that all sites starting with the same search terms as that name will get blocked too as an accidental side-effect.

Accusing google of blocking all search suggestions on a particular topic is a larger accusation than accusing them of just blocking search suggestions for one single individual site.

As a previous commenter mentioned, there are plenty of negative suggested search queries for “Mohammed is” as well as an absence of search queries for things like “Americans are”.

Changing the specific article from “Islam is” to “Islam was” will yield good and bad results. Also, changing it to “Islam will” yields a plethora of negative smears.

I think the real question here is: Why are we taking Google Autocomplete seriously? How exactly do these results give any reliable reflection of Google as a company?
Answer: They probably don’t. This whole “controversy” is ridiculous.

Sorry for the late comment. I just now stumbled upon your blog. Apparently Google has since fixed the problem. I just typed in “islam is” and autocomplete gave me the expected completions–the same as with any other religion. Do you know at what point they rectified this situation?